Beautiful
by Lena xo
Summary: Seth finds his imprint in New York. She is beautiful...and a moment later he loses her in the crowd. One-shot, post BD.


New York overwhelmed the senses, but Seth Clearwater had a lot more senses to overwhelm than most. The dark of the night was driven out by flashing lights paparazzi around them, the giant screens in Times Square the worst culprit of them all. He was compounded from all sides by voices, cars revving, yells, cries, screams, horns beeping; but it was his scent that he felt the loss of most. The strong exhaust from the vehicles burned through the strongest, but occasionally through the smog there was a myriad of others – cloying perfume, the heavy body odour of a homeless man who brushed past him, fifty different kinds of street foods – painted the picture of the urban sprawl. The scents came and left faster than his brain could sort through them. His scent of smell before and after shifting was like being blind and then learning to see, but being in New York made him feel like he was in the dark again.

That was not to say he didn't like the Big Apple. It was different, that was for sure. Never a moment of silence, and Seth spent a lot of time trying not to look like a vulnerable small town boy, even though that was exactly what he was.

Leah was small-town too, he thought as he glanced at her. But she had changed since she had left the reservation four years ago. The girl back then would have never fallen in love, for fear of causing that person the same pain she had once been through. She also would have never left La Push. But here she was, happier than she had ever been in the small town, with her high-class career and a doting human fiance. She had been worried, at first, that she might leave him for an imprint, but in the end decided she could not sacrifice a very real love in front of her for someone she might never even meet in her lifetime. And so he was not an imprint, but they loved each other nonetheless. Leah was happy, and so Seth was happy for her.

Next to him, Seth felt Embry shudder. His forehead was crinkled in a scowl, his scarf pulled up over his nose to try and mute the scents. The problem with sharing a communal mind with a guy for eight years was that you could read their thoughts like they were screening across his face. Seth chuckled, and Embry caught his eye and shook his head. Another problem, of course, was that the reverse was true for Embry, who could tune into the channel of Seth's mind whenever he wanted. Seth liked New York, even though he wouldn't want to live here. Embry loathed it completely, and would catch the next flight if he didn't feel compelled to stay with Seth. The concrete jungle was no place for a wolf.

They were just one of the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who had pushed their way through to Times Square on New Year's Eve. They were being jostled by the crowd at all times, and Seth fought hard to keep Embry and Leah in his sight. In this crowd, it would be very easy to lose their scents. The pressing of body odour from all sides was making him feel nauseous if he thought about it too much. To try and take his mind off it, he looked at the screens in front of him, which was clocked two minutes to midnight. A second later Embry and Seth winced at the particularly loud shrieks of a group of young women reached new heights the closer it ticked over to midnight.

Embry's hands were over his ears, but Seth tried to breathe it all and take it all in. It would be good, too, he thought for some of the younger pack members to experience New York, and he wanted to be there fully in the moment so they could appreciate it later when they saw his memories.

The numbers counting down on the screens ticked down further and further. A minute to midnight, the crowd around them started counting down in unison.

A hand pressed against Seth's shoulder and, having been pressed into the tin of human sardines for awhile now, he ignored it at first. But the hand became gradually more insistent, tugging and tapping on his shoulder, and so he turned with twenty seconds to go to midnight, mouth opened to deliver a retort.

Instead, he found himself facing an angel.

She was beautiful.

Her strawberry hair fell around her her round face in large curls. Her bangs hung over her forehead, and she reached up and pushed them out of her green eyes, even as she was jostled from the side by other people in the crowd. She had a blue beanie on and a brown coat against the cold, and blue jeans on over black boots. Her pale cheeks were flushed, her pink lips pursed in a shy smile.

All of this information Seth's mind processed in a heartbeat, and it took a moment longer for him to realise that she was leaning into him. Seth's body reacted instinctively, as naturally as if she was calling out to him for the hundredth time, and he was answering. His hand went up to cradle her face as their lips met, and fireworks went off, both literally and figuratively as the new year rolled in.

Heat flooded him and she leaned forward, pressing her whole body up against his. His free arm went to wrap around her waist to pull her even closer as her mouth began to move against his, deepening the kiss. Later on he would remember the roaring of the crowd around him, the screams in his ears; but in that moment all he could hear was her breathing, her heart beating, her decadent scent filling his senses and setting fire to the very blood in his veins.

And finally, inevitably, gut-wrenchingly, they both pulled back. His hand fell from her face, but his other still rested on her hip. They smiled at each other, and the angel before him whispered one word that he heard above all the others.

"Wow."

Seth realised her friends behind her were whooping and cat-calling, and Embry's jaw was somewhere on the ground behind them. She laughed and then her friends were pulling her away, and she was smiling and turning from him and being dragged through the crowd away from him. Seth took a moment too long to process what was happening, and in that moment she disappeared into the crowd.

And she was gone, and his heart along with her.

xXx

He had pushed and shoved his way through the crowd, desperately trying to follow her. But the crowd had closed around her water, and in the assault of scents and sound he couldn't track her. She had disappeared into the cloying smell and sound of Manhattan, and in that moment he felt a hate for New York in his very bones.

Now he was face up in his bed whilst the voices of his friends, seated around the dining table, drifted around him.

"I described her face to a criminal profiler and he drew her, and we put the posters up around Times Square and took out ads in all the papers. Something has to yield, surely," said Embry.

"I've been posting all over social media," said Leah. There was a tapping noise and Seth could picture her right foot, tapping impatiently on the ground as she spoke "There's only supposed to be four degrees of separation between one person and anyone else. Someone I've met here might know her."

"We've been patrolling the city in groups, trying to find her," murmured Jacob.

Sam's voice spoke over conference call through the phone. "Keep looking. We have to find her and soon. Or else..."

"Or else what?" asked Jacob.

Quil's voice, also over the phone. "We don't _know,"_ he said. "This has never happened before. An imprint dying, sure, but a wolf never finding his imprint? It's unprecedented."

"We'll just have to find her," huffed Embry, frustration lacing his voice. "How many people can there be in this place?"

"Try 8 million," said Seth from the doorway.

They turned to look at him, and over the phone Sam had gone quiet.

"I looked it up before we came here. There is at least 8 million people just living in New York, not including tourists and visitors," he said. "She might not even be living here. She could have flown out to another country the next day for all I know."

Leah stood slowly from her place at the dining table. "Seth..."

"It's fine," said Seth. "Thank you for all of your effort, guys, but you are fighting an impossible fight. It clearly just wasn't meant to be."

No one spoke, though Embry and Jacob both opened their mouths several times as if to say something. But Seth could read their thought processes across their face. They wanted to say that he was wrong, but they couldn't because they knew he was right.

Seth turned and left them in Leah's apartment.

He took a moment to lace on his sneakers and a few seconds later he hit the pavement and headed towards Central Park. The people around him blurred and beneath his skin his wolf was pushing trying to force a change. The beast was certain he could do a better job of tracking her down than Seth, even though it had no clue where to start.

Seth passed through the gilded gates and he chose a path without any thought, following the winding concrete through grass and trees. The pain of losing her seconds after finding her was coursing through him, blinding him to the outside world. He had known abstractly before imprinting that the perfect person for him was out there somewhere, walking this earth. But knowing it and having met her were completely different feelings. Like as a child knowing that one day his father would die, and then experiencing the anguish at his funeral. But this pain was even more consuming. Jacob had once described the bonds to an imprint like that of steel cables, anchoring you to this earth. Seth's stretched out in all directions, threatening to rip him apart, and he couldn't see where any of them went-

"Oof!"

Seth had smashed into someone. Unfortunately for that someone, running into a Quileute werewolf was only a hair softer than running full pelt into a brick wall.

"Shit," Seth swore, and his hands reached out to steady the person he'd just about bowled over, his hands closing over their shoulders to straighten them.

His skin heated in awareness, and the head tipped up to look up at him with bright green eyes, which widened with recognition a second later.

She beamed up at him, her eyes crinkling. Her hair was still loose around her face and her cheeks flushed, but this time it was from the exercise. She had black leggings on and an oversized shirt which hung off one pale shoulder, revealing the black strap underneath. Her chest heaved up and down, though from the exercise or their collision, Seth wasn't sure.

"You," she whispered. Seth grinned at her.

"Me," he said simply.

His hands were still clutching her shoulders, and he was certain no human force could have peeled them from her in that moment. He was afraid this was a dream and she was a mirage, and she would disappear if he let her go. A secondary fear was that she would think he was a weirdo, but she didn't seem keen to move, and her eyes were riveted on his face, as if memorising him and drinking him in.

"I'm Seth," he said finally.

"Abigail," she managed to get out between huffs and puffs. They stood there for a moment longer, staring at each other, and then in the same instant moved towards each other and his lips met hers.

 **AN: And they lived happily ever after. Seriously considered giving this one a sad ending, but I just couldn't do it. Had this one rattling around in my head for a long while now and it needed to get out. Soundtrack is obviously You're Beautiful by James Blunt. I distinctly remember not getting the song when I was younger, and then one day it came over the radio and everything just seemed to click into place. I've never been to New York, so please excuse any inaccuracies.**

 **Oh, and happy birthday, Izzy!**

 **Lots of love,**

 **Lena xo**


End file.
